4822 North Long Avenue
Chicago, IL 60630
USA
Tour of Jefferson Park 2010 Poster
Tour of Jefferson Park 2012 Poster
Jefferson Park, Chicago Community Area #11 is 10 miles northwest of the Loop. Nicknamed, the “Gateway to Chicago”, farmers once came from far and wide to sell their goods in Jefferson, named to honor Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson’s ideal location began as two Native American trails, grew to include the area’s earliest toll plank roads, and was thereafter augmented by rail and commuter lines. Today the area has a population of over 40,000, a tremendous amount of green space, historical homes and buildings throughout, and a namesake park on the National Register of Historic Places. Hop on your bike to visit an extra and intra-urban experience that barely feels like Chicago at the same time that it typifies it.
This is running of the Tour of Jefferson Park is being done in association with Good City as part of the Indian Boundary Bike Tours series, marking the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of St. Louis of 1816.
About the Indian Boundary Bike Tour Series
Presented by Chicago Velo in association with Good City
On August 24, 1816 at the second Treaty of St. Louis, the Nations of the Great Lakes region known as the Council of the Three Fires, the Odawa, the Potawatomi and the Ojibwe ceded to the United States a 20-mile stretch of land from Calumet City to the northernmost communities of present day Chicago and from Lake Michigan to the Fox and Illinois Rivers. This marks the two hundredth year of the treaty, which unfolded in the aftermath of the Battle of Fort Dearborn, and marked a new chapter in the United States’ acquisition of territory and displacement of the indigenous people of the region. The Treaty of St. Louis is a name given to a series of treaties between the United States and a number of Native American tribes and Nations between 1804 and 1824 and the signing of the second treaty of 1816 is one of the most impacting events in Illinois’ history that paved the way for statehood and forever shaped the geography and character of Chicago and many surrounding suburbs.
The Indian Boundary Bike Tours will commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Treaty of St. Louis of 1816t with five bike tours that feature four northern Chicago Community Areas most impacted by the Indian Boundary, and a fifth tour looking at the Prairie School Architecture of the area, a tour that is also part of the Prairie Tours series.
